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CONNIE: What, really, are the Ten Commandments? A civil law? A religious law? Or a little of both. And by the way, what exactly is the First Commandment? Join us today for a look at God’s Ten Words!

Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 75 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko. Friend, we want to thank you for tuning in to our program today. If you were with us last week you know we’ve launched into a series looking at the Ten Commandments. Today’s topic is the First Commandment, but we also want to take a look at some of the hot-button issues that put the Ten Commandments into the news in 2005.

CONNIE: I know I’ve heard quite a lot of discussion, because the Supreme Court made what some people thought was a rather ambiguous ruling: Ten Commandments can’t be posted in a courtroom, but a statue with them can be kept on the grounds of the State Capitol in Texas.

LONNIE: The ruling does seem a bit confusing Connie, and some Christians have accused the court of having an anti-religion bias because they ruled against having the Ten in civil courtrooms. But the issue is actually a bit broader than religious vs. anti-religious bias. A careful look at the Ten Commandments reveals that they’re much more than just secular rules for good behavior. They definitely have a religious agenda. And to try to clear up some of these issues, I spoke recently with Lincoln Steed of Liberty Magazine, a journal devoted to promoting religious liberty.

CONNIE: His viewpoint on this might come as a surprise to some people, since he’s a devoted Christian, but it’s worth hearing out. Let’s listen to that interview now.

LONNIE: Welcome to the broadcast, Lincoln Steed, editor of one of Americas oldest magazines, Liberty magazine.

LINCOLN: 100 years!

LONNIE: Tremendous! Now there’s been a lot of discussion recently…In fact a call to arms in the battle over the public display of the Ten Commandments. Are they just a purely ethical statement which any nation could post and should be seen? Or is this a moral law? Talk to us a little about this issue. Tom Delay wants to take on the supreme court and rearrange their thinking and put a little pressure on the judicial nominees, because he’s not happy about some of the things that the courts doing and not making the Ten Commandments so visible.

LINCOLN: I think that they are blaming the court for the troubles of society. They want to change the court in a way that was not intended by the founders. Obviously, the Ten Commandments are a religious list of commands that tells us to worship and obey God and put away other idols.

LONNIE: Are they then equally usable in China or Thailand?

LINCOLN: As a Christian, I would believe that they are equally used by an individual, but I would be reticent to ask any state to adopt them as their control mechanisms. As we’ve seen in some of the Middle Eastern countries and states, when some of their laws are applied pretty rigorously, we have things like beheading’s in the public for things such as stealing and adultery. Too many “Right” thinking Christians in this country would be too happy to see public executions in this country just for adultery.

LONNIE: Now, we’re largely speaking to a Christian audience in basically a Christian nation, but what I’m hearing you saying is that because we cherish our religious liberties of individuals to express their own kinds of worship… I mean, this is really dealing with a Christian mandate. I wouldn’t really want the Buddhists code or some other religions in the lobby of a courthouse, right? Well, there are certainly differently symbols and such that hang in courtrooms that represent various religions, but I’m not comfortable with a particular religious leader given the power to interrupt the law. People tend to forget, that while they understand the truth, the church next door interprets it a little differently.

LONNIE: The Christian Rights reaction then to the Supreme Courts decision, could it be that some of us in the Christian Right may not necessarily agree that we should push it into the public circle?

LINCOLN: We need to be careful how we define the Christian Right, it’s a very real political movement, but not all Christians are on that same wavelength as the more extreme politically oriented ones. It should be ok to be a conservative based Christian and be concerned about the moral compass of the country and to morally revive it without buying into this political agenda. As I wrote once in Liberty Magazine, I want to post the Ten Commandments in every home across the country. It should be in public places, but not put up by the government. If we leave it to the government it will lead us very quickly to the scaffold and irons.

LONNIE: Because I am a member of the Christian conservative part of America, but I’m not so much in support of pushing that publicly, that doesn’t make me an intolerant anti-extremist God does it?

LINCOLN: It shouldn’t! But as we know, a lot of the delicate language that goes around right now draws a quick line. The Right says, well if you’re opposed to posting the commandments in government buildings then you’re opposed to God, you’re pro-terrorist and therefore you are one with the terrorists. And in a lot of other countries that has led to bloodshed. And that is not really fair to Christians that may have some of the same views, just not the political sides of those views. The constitution was designed to keep the church and state separate.

LONNIE: Thank you Lincoln Steed for your insight into these issues.

“Wonderful Words of Life”, Good News Singers, from Gifts of Praise CD.

CONNIE: Amen! That was the Good News Singers with Wonderful Words of Life. That’s the way we here at Voice of Prophecy think about God’s Word—not as a bunch of rules and regulations, but as wonderful words designed to make life go better.

LONNIE: That’s absolutely right, Connie. We’ve been dedicated to helping people better understand God’s wonderful words of life ever since our first broadcast way back in 1929.

CONNIE: And ever since 1941, we’ve made Bible study guides available to our listeners free of charge to help them dig more deeply into those wonderful words of life.

LONNIE: Today thousands of people all over the world are studying the Discover Bible Lessons, and we’d like to invite you to join in. You can do it on the Internet at our web page, vop.com, or by correspondence. We’ll have full details about how to enroll in just a few minutes.

CONNIE: But now it’s time for Pastor Lonnie’s message for today, “whose Your God?” Share with us, Lonnie.

Who’s Your God?

“And God spake all these words, saying,

“ ‘I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

“ ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ ” (Exodus 20:1-3, KJV).

That’s how I remember memorizing the First Commandment as a boy—from the good old King James Version. Maybe that’s how you remember learning it too.

But say, if you memorized the commandments as a child, like I did, what did this first commandment mean to you? I mean, were you ever tempted to worship other gods—literally? Or did you kind of wonder What’s this commandment all about—I mean, really—does God think I’m going to start worshiping Baal or Thor or something? Do I really need this commandment in my list of “Don’ts”?

And it’s a valid question—at least if you live in America, and were raised in a basically Christian environment. You probably haven’t been tempted to go to a Hindu temple and choose a different god to worship.

Let’s face it. We live in a world very different from the Israelites who first received the Ten Commandments. Theirs was literally a god-infested world.

Coming out of Egypt, they had witnessed their neighbors worshiping almost anything that moved: crocodiles, falcons, ibises, even lowly dung beetles were all invested with divine potency by the Egyptians.

God took His chosen people out of that Egyptian environment, out into the wilderness, to speak to them and give them His laws. But even out in the barren wasteland of the Sinai Peninsula, they were surrounded by objects their Egyptian masters would have considered divine.

That falcon, soaring high up in the blue—was that Horus, the god of the sky, protector of Pharaoh, come to spy out your camp and lead the Egyptians to find you?

And the sun shining down from the sky—it could be known as at least two different gods—Re, the sun itself, and Aten the solar disk.

What about that little beetle lumbering across the path, rolling a ball of dung in front of him—wasn’t that also a god worthy of worship because it seemed to spring to life all by itself, emerging from a lump of mud with no mother or father to be seen?

And the jackals skulking about the edges of the camp at nightfall, scavenging through the garbage and filling the darkness with their eerie cries—don’t they send a shiver up and down your spine, reminding you of the god Anubis, whom the Egyptians said would guide your soul in the darkness of the underworld after death?

Well, we could go on and on, speaking of crocodiles, ibises, cows, bulls, frogs—almost anything that moved or appeared to move could be an object of worship in the world the Israelites had inhabited for more than two centuries. And there is no doubt that they had been influenced by their environment.

We know that because of a Bible story that comes just three chapters before the Ten Commandments. Here it is, in Exodus 17:

“So Joshua did as Moses said to him, and fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And so it was, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun” (Exodus 17:10-12, NKJV).

There are three people named in this story: Moses, whom we all know, Aaron, his brother, who became high priest; and one other person. Who is this fellow named Hur? Well, we don’t know a whole lot more about him, except that he was one of Moses’ closest companions. But the amazing thing about him is his name, Hur. It’s actually just a short form of the name of one of the Egyptians’ chief gods—Horus, the falcon/sky god! Hur’s parents had named him for an Egyptian god! And if you didn’t know better, you’d almost think this story is saying that the god Horus helped hold up Moses’ hands! (Of course it was just a man named Hur, not a god, but you get the point, don’t you. The people to whom the Lord addressed His First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” lived in a world surrounded and saturated with the divine. There was a very real temptation to let these other gods have a place in their lives—and even to put other gods in first place in their lives.

But is that true in our lives today? In other words, do we even need the First Commandment? Personally I’ve never been tempted to worship the sun or the moon, a hawk in the sky, or an alligator in the everglades. In fact, the world you and I live in is almost devoid of the divine. We aren’t tempted to appeal to the storm god Baal to provide rain for our crops—most of us get our crops in the supermarket, anyhow. We don’t believe that a divine beetle is required to propel the sun across the sky, and we don’t think that the moon is a majestic bull wandering amidst a herd of divine star-cows.

God and religion are, by law, relegated to only certain portions of the landscape here in America. The Ten Commandments, according to the Supreme Court, can be displayed in only a few publicly-owned settings. Within sight of our studios, a cross that has stood on public property on a hilltop was recently purchased by a private individual to spare the city a legal battle.

So, by and large, we’re not tempted by a lot of foreign gods trying to invade and take the place of the Lord in our lives, are we?

Or are we?

Jump forward with me, would you—to the New Testament; to a passage I believe is very closely tied to the First Commandment. In fact, I believe it is a little-known application of the principles found in the First Commandment, which in Deuteronomy 5 reads literally “You shall not have any other gods before my face” (Deut. 5:7, kw literal translation of LXX).

In Romans 14, the apostle Paul takes on the issue of Christian behavior, and particularly people’s attitudes toward one another when it comes to behavior. Way back in the time of Paul Christians were already arguing about what they could and couldn’t do, what they should eat, how they should relate to food offered to idols. These are issues that come up again and again in Paul’s writings, and when he wrote to the Romans, he urged them not to be judgmental about others’ behavior.

“Who are you to judge another's servant?” he wrote in Romans 14:4. “To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand” (NKJV). Regarding observance of holy days, for instance, he pointed out that, “He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it.” And he applied the same principle to the question of whether to eat food offered to idols: “He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks” (Romans 14:6, NKJV).

Now, these verses have been interpreted many different ways, and some use Paul’s comments here to justify their opinion that Sabbath observance is a matter of personal choice, one God is no longer concerned with. But those who think Paul is espousing a nihilistic [ny uh lis’ tic] “do whatever you think is right” morality need to look at the verses a bit more carefully.

When Paul says “To his own master he stands or falls,” he’s not saying that a slave can do whatever he pleases. According to scholars of the Greek language Paul wrote in, he’s saying, the slave does it “right in front of” his master, and the master will decide whether it’s right or wrong.

And when he says those who do or don’t do something do it “to the Lord,” he’s not saying Christians are free to decide, based on the whim of the moment, whether to do something or not. He reminds us a few verses later that we need to study these things out carefully, remembering that “we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Romans 14:10, NKJV). There’ s no room for whims and personal opinions. In verse 5 he urges us that each of us must “be fully convinced in his own mind.”

Most commentators don’t catch the connection here between Paul’s discourse on Christian behavior and the first commandment. But each of the issues Paul raises addresses how one should behave in relation to God, in recognition of the fact that we as His chosen people live our lives in His very presence. Literally, right in front of His face.

And the First Commandment tells us we must not put any other god (or any other thing) up there in front of us, between God’s face and our face! Romans 14 makes the New Testament application of this law. Remember, you’re living in God’s presence. Don’t let anything come between you and Him. All your actions are done before the face of God, and if they are against His will, they are a violation of the First Commandment. They allow something to come between you and God.

The First Commandment calls us to live our lives with God. It calls us to consider our actions, our attitudes, our wishes, our life goals. To consider them carefully, and to see where they stand in relation to God. Do they come between us and our devotion to Him? If so, we must consider carefully whether they have become a god we worship besides the Lord—and especially whether they have become a god we’ve placed between us and the face of the Almighty.

No, friend, I’ve never been tempted to worship a crocodile or a cow. A beetle rolling a ball of dirt across my path might invoke a little passing interest on my part, but I have no urge to worship it in place of the God of Heaven.

But there are other things that might come between me and my Lord. My career, perhaps. Or sports or travel, or something else.

For you the list may be different. Maybe it’s racy reading, or pornography that you know gets between you and your relationship to God. Maybe it’s a relationship that’s most important in your life, or the desire to run your own life without interference from God’s rulebook. Whatever it is, take a moment today, won’t you, to consider just how important it is to you. To meditate on the question of whether it really does come between you and your God.

If it does, then ask God to help you deal with it. Ask the Lord to help you put Him first in your life again.

And as you consider how to do that, remember just exactly how the First Commandment reads. It doesn’t really start with a prohibition. It starts with a reminder: “ ‘I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

Isn’t that wonderful, friend? God asks us to put Him first in our lives, but not just arbitrarily. He doesn’t come along and demand allegiance just because “I’m God and I said so!” He offers us deliverance. He offers us freedom—from whatever is standing between us and Him.

He’s our deliverer, our friend, and our helper. And he wants to help you and me put Him first. To deliver us from whatever would separate us from Him, demanding loyalty in His place.

You can turn to Him. Ask Him to deliver you. And to restore you to the right relationship, with nothing between you and your Savior!

“Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus”, Cadet Sisters, from Wonderful Words of Life CD